Guest editorial: Heritage interpretation, conflict and reconciliation in East Asia

Abstract

Memory politics has been and is increasingly a popular topic in the fields of heritage, memory and history studies, including the links between memory politics and trauma, and the implication of commemoration in political power and identity-making (Macdonald, 2013). Seminal publications in this field are now about 20 or more years old (for example, Nora, 1989; Huyssen, 1995; Edkins and Jenny, 2003; Pitcher, 2006; Bell, 2006). Various forms of placeholders of memory have been examined, such as heritage sites, museums and memorials. In recent years, scholarship has maintained a steady output, including Berger and Tekin (2018) on the contested premises underlying the European Union's ambition to develop a common historical narrative of Europe, Hubbell et al. (2020) on places of traumatic memories and the special issue of European Politics and Society (2020) on the politics of memory and oblivion. Topics have expanded from sites to rituals and commemoration practices that are associated with wars, genocides, terrorism and revolutions...